Featured Post

About Me

I am Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I am also the editor of the academic journal The Latin Americanist.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Suddenly, anti-immigration Republicans are scared that immigration reform might pass, almost by sleight of hand. They're scared that the leadership might go to conference:

“If the leadership appoints conferees and we go to conference committee with the Senate over the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill, the odds are pretty good they're going to come out with something that is basically the same as Schumer's bill,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said recently.

But they're even scared of President Obama's apparently magical powers of persuasion, where even just talking to the president could make you wander back, zombie-like, and vote for reform even though you don't want to:

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Wednesday he wouldn't meet with President Obama to discuss immigration reform because he feared it would be a trap.

"I was invited to the White House yesterday and I refused to meet with the president because I saw it as a political trap," the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee told radio host Laura Ingraham.

When you get down to it, this means they're scared of compromise. Krikorian sure as heck doesn't want compromise or negotiation; they are anathema. It's fear of bipartisanship, of working together, of solving problems jointly and, ultimately of majority agreeing it's a good idea.